Hey everyone, a few questions that I thought the game would explain eventually but it doesn't seem to want to. I tried looking on the warframe wiki, too, but couldn't find any answers. Your help is appreciated!

1. I get that the "three pieces of bluish paper" is credits, but on the home screen next to my name and my number of banked credits there is also a silver circle that has read "50" since I signed up. What the heck is that?
2. Sometimes at the end of a mission, in the bonus rewards section, I'll not only get bonus credits but also a certain amount of some other resource. It's listed directly to the right of the bonus credits and it's icon is some sort of white chimney or remote control surrounded by white swirls on both sides. What the heck is that?
3. As I'm starting to do Earth missions, I'm noticing everyone has sentinels. I'm sentinel-less, but I'm still using the default rifle, pistol, and 2nd tier sword from the Mercury boss. What order should I be upgrading in? Is it more important to get a sentinel before getting a new primary?
4. I've enabled "camara tracks melee target" and "melee auto targetting" because I read that they were supposed to help you "lock on" to targets in melee, but it still feels like I'm just wildly slashing through the air and really floaty/bad. Is there anything else I can do to improve melee or is it just like that in this game (I have heard they're working on improving it, but from what I understand that could be a long way off)
5. Any general tips of other obtuse/ill-explained systems that I might not even realize are there are helpful, too.

Thanks!

1. That silver circle is platinum the games' pay real money for this currency

For your reference below is something I posted in another thread talking about platnium

Warframe is one free to play game where almosteverything can be unlocked through playing the game except for cosmetics (sarves, additional colors, and trinkets for Sentinels) which I will talk about below. In Warframe loot drops are in the form of resources. Resources are materials that utilized in blueprints. In short, warframe / weapon blueprints can be bought at the Market with the credits earned in game or by rare drop. With that said as a new player you will not have much credits or any resources to begin with. So I've outlined some details why I think some things are worth buying with Platnium especially when you are first starting the game.

Do spend platinum on:

• Orokin Catalyst
• Orokin Reactor
• Syandanas (Scarf)
• Clan Emblem*

Consider spending platnium on:

• Bundles
• First Sentinel

Do Not Spend Precious Platinum on:

• Revives (Revives refill ever 24 hours and are per Warframe) - Cannot stress this enough
• Mod Packs
• Alternative Helmets

Gallery

• Orokin Catayst and Orokin Reactors (or Potatoes as the community calls them) while are craft-able items in game, the blue prints are usually only available in timed exclusive missions called Alerts. How rare? Bi-weekly the developers host a Q&A live stream where they discuss upcoming content updates and changes to the game. (By the way tuning in might give you chance to win free platinum but I'm not their PR >,> ) After their live-stream they will put up a 24 hour mission with either a Catalyst or Reactor blueprint as the reward. Thus, it is quite a semi-rare commodity. When you (permanently) add a Catalyst to a Warframe it doubles mod capacity of that Warframe. Each Mod has a cost to equipping it. As you collect more mods and fuse mods together to make them stronger the cost to equip increases. Mod Capacity determines how many Skills and Talents you can allot to your equipment and normally is proportional to a Warframe's / Weapon's level. ie. Level 1 Warframe has a mod capacity of 1.Each level unlocked is one mod capacity gained. A potato, permanently doubles that. The level cap of a weapon / warframe is 30. But with a potato equipped you'll have 60 Mod Capacity. This is extremely helpful for a newcomer to have catalyst to kickstart their warframe. At level 15, with a potato you will have mod capacity of that of a maxed warframe without a catalyst spent.

• Syandanas (scarf) while purely cosmetic items, are currently only available with the purchase of platinum. While the physics on them are still being work on, and right now kind of janky...I personally really like them.

• Clan Emblem* obviously only if your in clan... you want to fly your clan's flag right? Clan Emblems are only available as platinum purchase. On Frost's left shoulder is the Giant Bomb Heavy Industries clan emblem.

Another thing to consider spending platinum on is the bundles sometimes they will do packs of equipment, ie. Warframe + Set of Weapons. They are good because you get a few weapons and a warframe of which each come with a free slot and are pre-potato'd.

I also suggest buying your first sentinel. This is because when you start off you are considerably weaker, and scarce on resources. While Sentinel blueprints can be easily obtained for credits. You'll need a considerable amount of credits in order to actually build it. Sentinels can be very helpful. If you have played PSO a sentinel is a Mag. While you can't feed it.... you can equip it with a set of mods. Depending on the type of sentinel it will do different things in addition to doing damage to nearby enemies. For example the sentinel beside my warframe, is Carrier. It can suck up nearby items that drop automatically.

I won't go into details on the things you should not buy with platinum, just know you would be wasting your platinum if you did.

Revives, each warframe has 4 revives. They refill every 24 hours. You only need a revive if you go down, and there are no squad mates to get you back up, or they don't help you in time.

Mod packs, not worth it, I have never bought it personally but people on the internet said that mod packs are random and sometimes you can even get duplicates in a single pack. Bad. Just play the game.

Alternative Helmets, a cosmetic option but one that you can craft. Alternative helmets are rewards gained by Alerts. While they have additional states, they don't do much sometimes they can counter intuitive to the Warframe. The Developers have said that they are considering removing stats from Alternative Helmets anyways. Just wait for them to appear in alerts.

2. I believe you're talking about mission points most likely rewarded for completing survival. At the end of a survival type mission the time you lasted in the mission converted into rewards points.They don't have much more purpose than for leader-board stuff.

3. Sentinel can be crafted by buying a sentinel blueprint at the market place or bought using platinum. A sentinel can be helpful not crucial. Personally I would invested resources into crafting a new weapon especially if you have at this point reach level 30 with the MK-1 Braton. Its sort of known that MK-1 is severely underpowered weapon. IMO Warframe makes a terrible first impression.

If you have reach mastery rank 2 the Boltor is a good step up with high base damage and has puncture damage which deals more damage to armored enemies.

If you want to try a different weapon, the Strun is a decent new player shotgun effective against light armored and shielded enemies. I can be purchased with just credits so you don't need to craft it.

The paris, is a good weapon for the beginner levels but you may not have unlocked the resources needed to craft it yet.

4. A new melee combo system is coming in the next mass update (Update 12). One of the reason they are revamping the melee is to try to address the lack luster melee. Also the longsword weapons are in need of a buff from the developers after implementing Damage 2.0. Try out different type of melee weapon perhaps: Dual Zorens, Orthos, or Fragor.

5. The best resource at the moment is the Warframe Wikia updated by the community regularly. http://warframe.wikia.com

Awesome, that's a great help -- thanks!

I've got 15 hours in the game and still wonder I'm missing huge elements of it. Is completing missions on all the planets what I want to be doing? I mean what's my ultimate goal here, if there even is one?

I'm only level 2 on my "user level" (forget official term) and it doesn't seem to be going up anymore.

@sweetz: Your user level (called Mastery Rank in-game) goes up as your Warframe and equipment level up. Once those items hit the level cap (30) you'll need to switch to a different Warframe or weapons and level them up to gain experience for your Mastery Rank.

@sweetz: Right now, you are rather free to pick a goal for yourself - it's one of the things Warframe does poorly. It does sound like focusing on completing missions is a good idea, though - you'll need to have access to all missions to progress into the mid and late game. Don't stare yourself blind on that though - or any other goal, but rather focus on doing what you feel is fun.

An alternative idea, that was recently patched in - which i feel like may appeal to some people, is to focus on filling out the codex. It's a recent addition, and it doesn't have any actual benefits yet... but it's fun? :)

In the long run, it's all about becoming more effective - upgrading your mods to be more powerful, gathering more weapons and ranking up your mastery rank. Which you do by playing the game.

While some people talk about Warframe's "endgame", in my opinion, it doesn't really exist yet. T3 Orokin Void, Survival past an hour, etc are sometimes described as endgame by some - but in my opinion, that's more a sideeffect of Warframe's inherent scaling mechanics - which is one of the things it does well (except for at the lowest end, I understand). We're likely to see 'actual' designed endgame content the coming year, as Warframe matures from a beta game to a fully fledged game.

And join in when people in the clan are playing "lategame" content - we normally don't mind dragging someone along - in fact, it's usually more fun that way :)

Thanks for this post. Has helped me out :)